Passion and poetry: A study of desire in Louise Labe\u27s Oeuvres Completes

This dissertation explores the interrelationship between desire and the creative process in Louise Labe\u27s Oeuvres Completes. Through a close textual analysis of Labe\u27s works, I examine the poetics, the discourse, and the dynamics of desire, as its generative force is detoured, rerouted, and rearticulated within the framework of poetic expression. Part One, the Poetics of Desire, focuses on the thematic and conceptual parameters within which the dynamic of desire operates in Labe\u27s fictional world. Examining the etymological, theoretical, and philosophical underpinnings which support and in part determine desire\u27s sinuous path, this section of the dissertation proposes a descriptive model of desire which reflects its multi-dimensional and paradoxical nature. The \u27impossible\u27 nature of desire creates an unresolved tension between the desired object (male) that is forever out of reach and the desiring subject (female) who is propelled by the very gap or void which she would seek to fill. Part Two, the Discourse of Desire, explores the discordant voices generated by this unresolved tension. Echoing the underlying sociocultural and sexual dimensions of this conflict, these dueling voices of desire illustrate Labe\u27s manipulation of dominant literary traditions as she regenders the rhetoric of desire and revalorizes the feminine voice. Part Three, the Dynamics of Desire, examines the complex interplay of memory, desire, and the creative process. Privileged moments of the past are retrieved through the operation of memory, which reactivates both the desire and the suffering inherent in those past experiences. As the pain resurfaces, Labe\u27s poetic persona reinvests unfulfilled erotic energy in poetic expression, where the divine fury of desire is regenerated in lyric form. Foregrounding the privileged status of the creative process, Louise Labe\u27s Oeuvres Completes celebrate the intimate alliance between passion and poetry through which the writing of desire is endlessly renewed